Harley Benton D-120CE BK 4-stars Reviews

Bargain

This is my first acoustic, but not my first Harley Benton. I am a fan of the brand and expect low price, but with a few bits of personal preference in the setup.

Out of the box and tuned easily so off to a good start. I put a little more neck relief on it, felt there was a bit of choking. Think this is my preference/playing ability and not a problem at all with the guitar.

Tops of frets 14- 20 were very rough, but you cant access these as they are attached to body of guitar and the bottoms of these frets in the cut away are OK for smoothness.

Plugged this into my electric amp on clean and works well, but it gives a good sound on its own.

Some notes not in the description,

Comes with a new 9V D battery, take this out of plastic wrapper to make it work!

Comes with 2 pick guards, that are stick on, one tortoise shell the other black.

No cable

Good for the price

Good quality for the price, nice sound, you cannot expect more. If you're looking for a super beginner guitar for few bucks you'll be satisfied for sure, it can be compared with guitars that costs 50/80 euros more

Solid 4 stars.

Got 2 of those. One for me, one for a friend as a gift.

Both arrived without a scratch on the finish.

They look better than some of my other higher priced guitars.

One of the guitars had slightly creame finish instead of white, but who cares with that price :D. I've gifted the better finished one to my friend, and he liked it.

Both of them came out of the box playable, but the fret ends were sharp. And by sharp I mean...well sandpaper scratches your fingers less. 15-20 minutes with a file and a bit of polishing sorthed this problem out on both of the guitars.

The tuners are not the best, but they do their job.

Changed the strings on both of them, as I was unlucky to break a string while tuning the firsth one for some reason, and the second one had rust spots on the strings.

Soundwise... they both sound great.

With Daddario EJ10 strings, In open D tuning, the sound is deep and swampy. In standard tuning, the highs are clear and punchy.

Overall, you will need to spend some time on finishing the frets probably, but otherwise, it's just a great bargain for the price.

Good value

This is not the best acoustic guitar you're going to find out there but it's a pretty decent instrument and it also looks good. For the money you pay for it, it has a good quality

Incredible guitar, for the price point.

It is true you will be hard pressed to find a better guitar under 200 euro. If you also invest on taking this guitar to a shop to give it a nice full setup, you will end up with a very very playable guitar, having spent less than 150 euros.

The only negative comment I can make, is that there is great variance among these guitars (my brother and I got one each, and they were quite different). This is expected, as one of the main reasons this guitar is so cheap, is I assume the reduced costs of excessive human quality control. However, this can be made up for with a nice setup, as I mentioned in the first paragraph:)

Good way to start

Bought this for a kid as a first guitar.

Took it up to toy around a bit, and I have to say, it is amazing for its price.

The sound is a bit shallow but still it is bright, clean and sustain is much better than I was expecting

Honestly, I have played a lot of large brands low/mid end guitars and this can really bite.

You probably wont record on it or play large venues but for practicing, songwriting or small acoustic lineups - amazing!

A good travel guitar

It has everything you would expect from a electro-acoustic guitar of this price range and after upgrading the strings it sounds also good.

Sound-wise it is a bit more dull compared to slightly more expensive guitars that I've experienced but for the price the sound is good.

Quality-wise the frets on mine are bit harsh on the edges which can be annoying while playing and also the neck feel is not as easy to play as it could be.

Overall, this is can be a very nice travel guitar and this is how I use it.

For the money, it shouldn't be a question. BUY IT

As the title says, BUY THIS GUITAR. If nothing more than a beater guitar you don't care about getting dented or scratched... Sounds great, plays well, just a few things need tweaked out of the box...

Tuners work well, good strings on it out of the box, but on both D-120's I've bought (for myself and my father) they just stuck the bridge saddle in without setting string height. So i had to remove both and sand them down to proper height... If you don't it's like a kids guitar. 9 miles off the fret board. But if you have any basic skills whatsoever you can remedy that in 5 minutes. Other than that, it sounds great amplified, and you just can't go wrong...

not bad at all

for this price I can recommend this guitar.

I bought this for a little bit extra practice when I dont feel like setting up my electric guitar. stays in tune pretty well and sounds just fine.

after a short period the jack output stopped working so I couldn't use it more than once, hense the 2 star for quality. the one time it did use it, it sounded good!

Good guitar that needs some work

I'm still learning, so my opinion might not be the best to judge the instrument by.

I was looking for a cheap steel string guitar and picked up one of those.

Overall I rate it a good bargain if you know how to setup a guitar or if you are willing to learn.

If you want good play-ability out of the box, then something else might suit you better.

Pros:

It really looks nice and after some setup work, it plays nice and sounds nice. Very cheap too.

Cons:

At least my guitar had very high action and really hard to play. It needed lowering a lot. Fretboard needs some levelling too or you will have buzz after lowering action. New strings is a good idea too - pick some up with your guitar.

If you need help on setup then there is an excellent video on YouTube on this particular model:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTRbpwQJFU0

Great Value acoustic guitar!

I bought this guitar several months ago and I love it!the tuning is very stable, the sound is exactly what I was looking for: brightness and depth at the same time. I don't think you can find anything better for that price!

Great Cheap Option

This is a great cheap option if you are on a budget. Good build quality and sound, I have had no problems at all with it!

Great guitar for beginners

Well, to start off, I just want to say, to everybody, that this guitar for anyone, who is starting to play, learning just first things would be amazing.

I did first buy this guitar in the late 2012, and now after 6 years I can surely say what do I think about it.

1. There were some issues with the guitar, tho after just some polishing work at first it became a usual instrument that I picked up when got home after studies.

2. Tuning stability is fairly good, nothing to ride home about, but it works and you can have some fun with it for sure.

3.Sound is magnificent - I have played extremely expensive acoustics that just sound dull and doesn't have soul, for this instrument, playing it over these years - I have found the tone and versatility of it just brilliant.

4. I did add a pickguard to this guitar, as it didn't come with one when I bought it, but basicly - it has stood the test of time and I would recommend this to anyone who is learning to play guitar or is doing gigs and doesn't want to bring his 700 euro guitar with him :)

In the end I have to add, that in-built pickup system is OK at best, but I am not putting is down as this is after all under 100 euro guitar.

Well buikt

These guitars have been around a while and with the smallest of tweaking at the nut and perhaps the bridge you can have the intonation spot on, there is plenty of volume from the body and the fretboard is not too dry, perhaps a little lemon oil would brighten up the sound a little

A playable electro-acoustic guitar straight out of the box for £58 - how can you go wrong?

I set up budget guitars in my spare time and bought this acoustic as something of an experiment. About a year ago I bought another Harley Benton (a Les Paul gold top copy) which was pretty well made but also pretty badly set up. However, after fret-levelling, re-profiling and polishing and sorting out the action (bridge and nut) it now plays better than any other Les Paul copy I've had. On that basis I wanted to try out a HB acoustic to see if, for almost no money, I could end up with a decent instrument.

The D-120 came pretty well packed (a conventional guitar shaped box inside a large rectangular box) and felt very light. The first thing that greeted me on unwrapping was a 2mm chip to the top edge of the headstock; disappointing but for £58 not worth initiating a return for since I can drop a bit of black lacquer in there to fill anyway.

First impressions when unpacked were how light and how thin the construction of this guitar is (even by comparison with my 2002 Fender CD60). It's very black and very shiny but in patches the lacquer is so thin you can see the wood grain through it. It wouldn't take much to wear through to the wood sadly. A quick all-over check revealed a decent-looking instrument; 20 frets on a nice shaped neck, basic sealed tuners, lousy Chinese strings, a little EQ unit (9v battery supplied!) and a jackplug input socket that was loose. That is a REAL hassle on a guitar like this. Getting a hand or tool inside there to hold the internal part of the jack socket still while tightening down on the outside is going to be a challenge. Enough now to send back and request another one? Mmmm. Still no. It's too much hassle and I'm sure I can sort it out - but both this and the chipped headstock are basic quality control issues that should have been sorted and which could really spoil this guitar for someone without the experience and confidence to fix it themselves.

To my surprise the action on this guitar is not too bad straight out of the box. The tuners are 'all or nothing' and sticky but kind of work. The frets are awfully finished and scratchy as hell meaning string bends leave you wincing (but I can take care of that). But here's the thing: despite its several little faults, this thing is playable straight out of the box. It sounds pretty good acoustically and even better when plugged into my amp (which I have to say ISN'T a dedicated acoustic guitar amp).

So for £58 plus £10 postage what you get is a lightweight electro-acoustic guitar that plays better than almost anything else you're likely to find for so little money (apart from getting lucky and finding a second hand Fender or Vintage acoustic locally via eBay or Gumtree). This Harley Benton confirms my previous HB experience: these are great guitars IF you are able to put right the small niggling problems AND do some thorough set up work (including fret levelling & dressing). Otherwise this is still not a bad first guitar for a learner for almost no money - certainly far better than the all-too-common first 'acoustic' guitar that turns out to be an unplayable and cheap classical :-)

Excellent value guitar

This guitar was bought for one main reason. To use it as a bugdet guitar outdoors and not to have to worry about the rain and humid conditions. I use this guitar with our scouts and therefore I never went for an expensive guitar. Therefore I didn't expect much of a quality, but I was positively surprised, that even when this guitar is exposed to sun, then rain, then fog,... it stays in tune, never had any problem with the build quality and therefore suits my needs perfectly. If you are looking for a low budget acoustic guitar, capable of withstading even extreme conditions, pick this one. It's great.